Brisket was the cheap meat. Now it's almost the same price as chuck, at least where I am at, and I still have to trim off a couple pounds of fat.
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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came to say this. Next up the poor mans meatloaf alternative.
Sawdust?
used to be putting whole hard boiled eggs inside the meatloaf to stretch it but they are too precious for that now!
Isn’t the whole point of brisket that it’s a really cheap cut of meat?
And lobster used to be a garbage fish. The working class foods always seem to lead the charge, then gentrification sets in. Fish heads used to be nearly free in some places.
Chicken wings, too.
Restaurants would sell them for 25¢ each. If they needed to get rid of a bunch, 10¢ each. So cheap you never thought of making them at home except to use in a stock, maybe.
yeah i remember .10 wings that was before hooters came along; I feel like they played a big part in popularizing wings on the national stage.
The smokerbros found it.
I wanted to do a chuck roast, found 2 recipes I liked online and combined them.
Here's what I did:
1 pack of bacon, diced and cooked in olive oil on medium high until the edges were brown, then removed.
In the same pan, 2 diced carrots, 2 diced celery stalks, 2 diced Walla Walla sweet onions. Cooked on medium high until carmaelized, then removed.
3.37 pound boneless chuck roast. Patted dry, heavily salted and peppered, seared on one side for 5 minutes, flipped and then seared on the other side for 5 minutes and removed.
Added back 1/2 cup Grand Marnier and 2 cups of Malbec Wine. Deglazed the pan scraping up all the brown bits.
Put the bacon back in, put the veggies back in, stirred until well distributed. Added bay leaves, thyme and rosemary, several cloves of minced garlic, topped with the meat.
Brought to a boil then placed in a pre-heated 325° oven for 3 hours.
After 3 hours, beef was to temp and easily shreddable. (Finally! A reason to use the meat claws!) Resting on stove top while I cook some pasta to go with it.
Pasta was super simple. Boiled water and salt, cooked a bag of egg noodles for 8 or 9 minutes. Drained, removed, then melted a stick of butter in the pot, added a small container of heavy cream, added rosemary and thyme, brought it to a simmer then popped the pasta back in and cooked a couple of minutes.
that looks terrific nice job
This looks great, but I'm so confused by cooking sweet onions, they lose too much flavor because they are so mild. A white or yellow onion is sweeter when cooked, much better caramelization than a sweet onion. Love the idea of deglazing with orange liqueur and wine.
Cooking the onions with the other veggies shares the flavor across all of them. It makes this tasty veggie melange. ;)
chuck roast
In recent history every "cheaper" cut of beef in the US has been given a premium price tag now. Flank steak now costs as much as sirloin in most places around me, and Chuck is just under that.
As others have pointed out, brisket was supposed to be a "poor man's" alternative already. I just hope things don't get so expensive that organ meats become premium as well.
That sounds offal.
I love smoking chuck roast. I do it exactly like brisket, as the article suggests. Like it says, it generally doesn't slice well, so it comes out more like pulled pork, but it's delicious.
Not exactly what you're talking about, but I was gifted a full sized deli slicer from an uncle who found he wasn't using it much anymore, so I've been making a lot my own lunch meats. Chuck roasts and those boneless butterball turkey roasts are probably the things it's seen the most of.
I do them in the smoker a lot, but I'm treating it more like an oven than BBQ, taking it to about medium rare. They still pick up a nice smokiness, and slice down beautifully on the slicer and it's of course just a better tasting product.
Initially I kind of thought I'd be getting prime ribs for the slicer, and got a chuck as sort of a test, I was so happy with how the chuck came out I never really felt the need.
It probably could save me a bit of money, but I'm definitely loading my sandwiches up with a lot more meat than when I was buying deli meat, so I'm probably about breaking even on it.
I've also started dabbling in curing and smoking my own bacon and such, and again the slicer works wonders for that.
every time i have tried to buy one of those half the reviews say they suck even at the $200+ price points so i bail. I have looked into this a few times because i feed people a lot of sandwiches! What brand are you using that is actually useful at home?
The model I have is a Globe 150, which is probably at least about 60 years old, still does its job just fine though.
Globe is still around and making slicers (I think they're actually sort of the brand for slicers,) but you're not gonna find them new for around $200, looks like their cheapest model is just shy of $1000, they're definitely geared towards the commercial market.
I find it to be useful, but I wouldn't say that everyone would. I work a weird night shift schedule, which leaves me up by myself at night, so I have plenty of time to roast something up, slice it, and break down and clean the slicer while my wife is asleep. It's heavy and takes up a lot of space so you kind of need to have a dedicated table or counter space for it, you're not going to want to move it around a lot. I also live close to a restaurant depot that's really liberal with their guest passes, so I can buy whole deli meats and cheeses from there too.
If this slicer ever dies on me, I don't know that it would be worth it to me personally to replace it with a new one, but if I could snatch up a used commercial slicer for less than $500 I'd jump on it.
yeahhh that's exactly what i found every time i looked. the reviews on slicers suck until you get up into the big digits.
i'll continue to just pine for one. I would use it a lot but that much cash could replace my whole kitchen!
I never thought of trying to find a used one 🤔
If you keep an eye out for restaurants and such going out of business, you might be able to pick one up for pretty cheap, around me a lot of them seem to go to auction sites like hibid for liquidation
And of course weird things turn up on Facebook marketplace, Craigslist, etc. from time to time.
I suspect some of the newer slicers probably weigh less it looks like they're mostly stainless sheet metal these days, but mine is made of some pretty massive solid metal castings and probably weighs close to 100lbs, so if you track one down like mine probably plan on bringing a friend to help move it. I can muscle it around to clean it and such, but I wouldn't really want to carry it to or from my car, or up or down the stairs by myself.
Sounds great. Isn't the chuck tough if you only take it to medium rare though?
It probably would be if I were slicing it by hand, but slicing it down to lunch-meat thickness on the slicer kind of makes up for that.
And while I'm not going as low and slow as if I was BBQing, I'm normally aiming for about 250° when I do it in my smoker, which is a bit lower than I'd normally do one in the oven, so it does get a little extra time to break down the connective tissue.
But even when I do them in the oven I find that they come out just fine.
The thin slices makes sense, but the connective tissue doesn't start breaking down until an internal temperature of like 165. Generally you're aiming for 195 to 200 IT to get it tender. But the toughest is going to be cooked medium to the 190ish. Medium rare or rare is going to be more tender than medium by a lot, but not as tender as the 195.
Connective tissue can break down at a lower temperature, it just takes a lot longer, that's the concept behind sous vide cooking after all.
I don't think I'm breaking down a lot of that tissues, but it does seem to be doing something, it does seem to come out a little more tender from my smoker than the oven at a higher temperature, not a massive difference, but a little.
But yes, the thin slices is definitely the bigger factor, and I don't really want it falling apart tender anyway so it can slice down cleanly.
Hmm, I've done a pork shoulder for like 12 hours in the smoker and had to pull it early, and it was pretty tough. But maybe with a smaller piece of meat it's holding a temp longer? Still, I don't think medium rare and connective tissue breakdown are compatible, but I'm not a food scientist.
Did you get a cheap home slicer or a more expensive commercial type slicer?
I have a globe 150, which is definitely more of a commercial slicer, although one that's probably 60+ years old.
I couldn't be happier with it, and they do turn up occasionally on Facebook marketplace and such once in a while, so if you see one for a decent price snatch it up. With a little searching you can even find replacement parts for them online.
Astolfo?
Nothing in Fate can possibly be just as good as any kind of brisket.
This made me laugh after reading the news, so thank you